Behind the Canvas
by Katsu
Summary: Art has returned, and touches even the soul of a former Cleric. (5)


**Behind the Canvas**

The Caretaker frowned at the painting, noticing in the harsh museum light that a small patch of the oil rendered flowers still had a slightly grey, dirty tinge to it. _Cerulean blue, alizarin crimson, brown ochre, cadmium green deep..._ The list of colors was a mantra, always going in the very back of his mind. He could summon the memory of each color in turn, and did just that, mentally comparing his chart to the painting before him. Yes, it was inescapable. Someone had missed a spot while they were restoring this one. 

He'd had a name at one point, Eoin Delphi, but he was the only one that remembered it any more. And even he thought of himself as The Caretaker, or, when he was feeling particularly egotistical, The Caretaker of Antiquities. Under the Tetragrammaton, he'd been a dirty little secret that lived deep in a subbasement, a pale, stretched out, grey and innocuous man. Oh, they'd dosed him like everyone else, but he'd handled many of the confiscated paintings and books that the council kept on the sly, restoring them after the miserable treatment they'd been given by Sense Offenders. 

The mere memory forced a derisive sniff from him. Rembrandts locked in mildewed cabinets. Michelangelo statues buried in stain causing red clay soil. For heaven's sake, they'd hidden a case of leather bound first edition books in a storm sewer once! It was enough to make a man weep, and now that he was capable of the emotional component of that, he did so with distressing regularity. Every time the new government handed over another crudely put together crate of treasures, stained with smoke or warped with water, tears of sympathetic pain would spring to his eyes. 

He'd heard his new underlings - and that was another thing, the utter clumsy bull-headedness of these overwrought youths! - joking that he cared more for paintings than people, that he'd rather sleep with the _Venus di Milo_, for all her lack of arms, than any whole woman of flesh and blood. 

And that was supposed to be some sort of insult. Really. Another derisive sniff emanated from his hawkish nose. A woman in a burnt sienna pinafore, half of a young couple with a child sandwiched between them, gave him a rather concerned look from where she stood, over by Van Gogh's _Sunflowers_. It was beautifully restored, he noted with no small amount of pride, completely ignoring the interlopers in his domain. He'd wielded the delicate cleaning brushes himself, until the yellows glowed like the sun and the swirls of oil paint once again seemed vibrant enough to reach out and grab the unwary. 

The offensive spot of dirt on the still life once again caught his eye, and he shook his head. He must, indeed, be aging if he was allowing his own pride, however justified, to distract him in such a manner. He pulled a small black radio from his patent leather belt and held it in one immaculate, white-gloved hand. "Margo, please have the lab technicians come up to the seventh floor and pull painting one-seven-five for return to the restoration lab." He said, his accent perfect and clipped. It echoed slightly in the marble hall with its sparse wooden benches, and he suppressed a wince. "And find out who restored and who inspected this; I wish to have them both in my office no later than two o'clock today for official reprimand." 

"Yes sir," Margo said, modulating her voice low. The Caretaker nodded idle approval at the radio; he'd gotten tired of reminding her to speak properly, and apparently his reprimands had finally made an impression. The way she'd made the radio squawk when she'd first been hired was enough to bring a pained wince to his face with its mere memory. 

_Tick, tick, tick._ An unnaturally loud sound drew his attention for a moment. A woman had entered the gallery, dressed in a scarlet overcoat of vaguely familiar cut and leaning heavily on a black cane. Her smooth brown hair was pulled back severely, giving her a predatory look. Still, she didn't appear to be a troublemaker, so he returned to his thoughts, only idly watching her from the corner of his eye. 

He clipped the radio back to his belt and moved on to inspect the next of his charges, a painting that had just been brought up from the labs. A seascape this time, with a broad expanse of beautifully textured beach. The waves were realistically foamy, and to his immense delight, perfectly restored. The picture's only human subject smiled serenely at him. The windblown blonde hair, the faraway grey eyes, the flowing white of his shirt were all perfectly rendered and cleaned. 

Perhaps the Gods had taken pity on him and made this a day with only one reprimand; he'd broken his personal record the day before, when he'd had staff lined up down the hall, waiting their turn to come into his office and feel the lash of his scorn at their shoddy work. 

His heart gave an anxious little flutter, and he grimaced as he moved to the next painting. Yesterday had very nearly been more stress than his poor and admittedly old bones were capable of handling. After dressing down six lab technicians and firing a seventh, Margo had let in a governmental investigator without so much as warning him. The woman, dressed in a stern and decidedly unflattering charcoal frock, had questioned him for nearly an hour before finally leaving. 

The questioning of his loyalty had nearly thrown him into disarray with an influx of unaccustomed anger. He was beginning to feel like an old dog incapable of learning new tricks. She'd actually had the gall to bald-facedly demand if he wished for the return of the dose. 

He'd given her the answer she'd wanted, of course: _no_. He was quite adept at telling his various masters what they wished to hear so that he could simply get on with his work with a minimum of interference. In truth, he would have almost preferred it, for his own health and for the safety of charges. Emotional people did odd, unpredictable things, like set themselves on fire or attempt to steal paintings. He'd seen both recently. 

_Tick, tick, tick..._

The Caretaker nearly jumped out of his skin, suddenly aware that the strange, limping woman was almost standing next to him. She'd made a beeline for the seascape, and he hadn't even noticed, so focused on his own ruminations. 

Still, she was silent and almost unmoving when she stood in front of the painting. That, he could approve of. Really, it wasn't her fault that she was so loud as she walked, he supposed, being physically limited. She looked at the painting with appropriate, round-eyed awe, her mouth open in a tiny 'o' of wonder. 

What she did next, however, was completely unacceptable. Like a woman asleep, she pulled the black leather glove from the hand not occupied by her cane, and reached out toward the painting. Her thin, pale fingers shook slightly. 

Shock almost overcame him, and her fingers had nearly reached the canvas before he was capable of lurching into action. "Miss!" he said, in the strong voice he usually saved for disciplinary rantings. "What in heaven's name are you doing?" 

She didn't even have the courtesy to be surprised or the least bit ashamed. Her hand fell gracefully away from the painting, and she turned to look at him, her eyes plainly stating that he was intruding upon something he had no business in. "Has a painting ever made you miss someone?" she asked wistfully, looking back toward the picture of the man. Her eyes were soft with tears. "Or perhaps made you wish that you could forget them?" 

"Most certainly not," he said. "The paintings are not to be touched, miss. Many of them are quite fragile, and you could cause them great damage." His heart was pounding as he spoke, sweat breaking out on his upper lip. He fumbled for his radio. 

"That won't be necessary, I assure you," she said, her voice calm, the dreaming quality of her movements gone. Everything about her became clipped and efficient. 

"Young lady, I'm afraid that I must ask you to leave immediately." 

Unhurrying, she pulled her glove back on. The ease in that movement drew his eyes, and he realized why he'd recognized the coat she wore; it was a copy of that of a Cleric, except for the intensely disturbing color. He took an involuntary step back. 

She smiled tightly. "There's nothing to fear, Caretaker. I apologize for disturbing you." Without another word of explanation, she turned and walked away, her limping stride measured and calm. _Tick, tick, tick..._

He stood, radio dangling from his fingers as he watched her go. As soon as the last tick of her cane had echoed into oblivion, his knees gave way and he collapsed back onto one of the wooden benches. The fluttering was back, and he pressed one hand to his chest, certain that another incident of this kind would be the end of him. 

"Margo," he said weakly into the radio, "please come to the seventh floor gallery with a bottle of water and my pillbox." 

He tried to look at the bright side as he waited for the infernally slow girl to show up. Perhaps this would be enough evidence to convince the board that he needed funding for a security system. 

His throat was dry as he glanced the way the woman had gone. A very good security system. 


End file.
